


Re-Entry

by Omorka



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal hasn't yet learned that drug-running always comes with complications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re-Entry

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the second Story Lottery at LJ. Potential mild spoilers for the end of the TV series.

"So wait, we're runnin' what to who?" Jayne demanded, leaning against the bulkhead with one arm.

Mal fixed the mercenary with a glare. "The asteroid miners on Arctic 167 need their micrograv drugs, and they've been cut off from their more legitimate suppliers because of shortages closer to Core. They offered to hire us to pick up a less-legitimate shipment on Littlefall and deliver it to their main dome. Fast run, pay's not gonna make us rich but it'll cover some bills and a few trinkets besides, and fairly low-risk unless Littlefall's gotten tighter since we were last there." He brushed his hands on his pants. "Seeing as how we've got nothing better to do and we're in the area, I said yes. Any more questions?"

"Which drugs in particular?" Simon asked from the one comfortable chair.

"Don't remember, but if you said it I'd probably recognize it," Mal shrugged.

The doctor glanced upwards as if he were reading the page of a remembered book. "Levitrin, pyretholglyn, midigravitrine, -"

"That last one. I think."

Simon nodded. "Not one of the ones that has recreational usages."

"So it's probably legit." Zoe crossed her arms in front of her. "Not that I'd say no even if I thought it wasn't. We're running in the red."

Wash nodded. "How did they know about us?"

"They've done business with one of Badger's other associates before, for 'a few luxuries,' I believe they put it." Mal shrugged. "Not sure how they knew we were in their corner of the system, but I imagine asteroid miners keep a good eye on what's flying around in their vicinity."

"And we're not flying cool at the moment, thanks to the vent leak." Kaylee tucked her hair behind her ears. "If they're searching for trace plasma, they'd've found us as soon as we came in range."

"Which means we're more traceable than I'd like, and we need the cash to fix the vent." Mal crossed his arms. "Any _other_ questions?"

Wash shook his head. "The Arctic group is the L4 asteroid cluster behind Littlefall, right?"

"Didn't check." Mal raised his eyebrows at his pilot. "Figured you could take care of that?"

"I'll get right on it," sighed Wash. Zoe gave the captain a skeptical look and followed her husband up to the bridge. Mal glared at Jayne and headed in the other direction.

"I'm just saying, the last four drug runs we did all got complicated," Jayne complained to the space where Mal had been.

"I remember," Simon agreed.

Kaylee's cheerful features slipped a little farther into worry. When Jayne and Simon agreed on something, it was cause for concern all around.

\---

"Why is it always a bar?" the doctor asked to no one in particular, as they pushed through the swinging door.

"Because they're crowded and usually not well lit," shrugged Kaylee. " 'Sides, a fight breaks out, it's not too far from business as usual."

"We'd just as soon not have any fights breaking out," Zoe reminded them. Only Jayne looked like he might have needed the reminder. The booth their contact had told them to take was empty, and the five of them crowded around it, stealing a couple of chairs from its neighbors. Mal snorted at the grapevines carved into the back of his as he sank into it.

Littlefall was a world putting on a few airs. It had lucked out in the terraforming lottery; the climate wasn't too harsh in the temperate zone, water was fairly plentiful, and the soil had come out astonishingly fertile for a border world. Rocky hillsides were punctuated with scraggly olive groves and vineyards, and the valleys were dotted with orchards of apples and pears. The bar had beer, but most of the patrons were drinking cider.

The waitress whisked past their table on a pair of roller-skates, then wheeled back around. "What can I get you?" she asked, dimpling at Jayne. Her face would have looked younger than Kaylee's if it hadn't been covered with a tracery of green vines. Most of the citizens of Littlefall were tattooed, and the dominant motifs were plants of various sorts; the bouncer at the door had oak branches down both arms.

"What's good?" Mal asked, interrupting Jayne before he could get out a crude come-on.

"And cheap." The corners of Zoe's mouth were turned down; she was uncomfortable with this table - it felt too exposed. Its one benefit was that she could see the kitchen door, the front door, and the main staircase to the second floor balcony from here.

The waitress laughed. "Try the Five Orchards perry, then - it's tasty, and it's got a great kick for the price." The ivy around her mouth seemed to rustle in some unseen wind as she spoke.

"Five of those, then." Mal nodded and tried to look nonchalant.

"Half-pint for me, please," Kaylee added.

The waitress nodded. "Coming right up. Oh, hon, you should visit my artist." She pointed to the tiny white blossoms on her arms. "He's got a sunflower motif to die for."

"Really? I'll keep it in mind," the mechanic beamed. The waitress rolled off into the crowd by the pool table.

Jayne smirked. "Think I'll get something done with nuts, m'self." Simon rolled his eyes.

"Heads up," Zoe ordered. A nervous-looking man in a wheat motif and a knee-length tunic slunk through the door and glanced around, his eyes stopping at every uninked face. Mal shifted his weight just enough to make the movement visible; the nervous man caught the motion in his peripheral vision and began heading towards them.

"You're early," Wheatstalk hissed, pressing his hands flat against the table. "You need to be more careful."

"Sorry," Mal shrugged. "You got the goods?"

Wheatstalk pointed without raising his hands. "It's the coffee table over there." His head lowered, ash-blond hair falling into his eyes. "But don't take it until all the guys with beasts are gone. The local racket -"

A whistling noise came from the balcony. Wheatstalk gasped, as if the breath had been knocked from him; a bloom of red appeared on his tunic, and he collapsed onto the table. A hunting arrow protruded from his back.

Simon and Jayne jumped to their feet simultaneously. The doctor reached for their informant; the mercenary whipped out his gun and searched the railing above him. He found his target; a tall, wiry man with two leaping deer among the hickory trees on his bare chest had another arrow nocked. A hint of a grin spread across the hunter's face as he took careful aim.

Jayne fired once; the bow leaped in the archer's hand as the bullet snapped the string in two and grazed his shoulder. Mal and Zoe were on their feet by the time Jayne got off the second shot; the sound of the mare's-leg being cocked brought the room to a standstill. Kaylee saw their waitress dive behind the wood of the bar.

A huge man, kilted and booted but shirtless, shouldered the bleeding archer out of the way. A roaring grizzly parted a stand of pines on his chest. He surveyed the room, pointing down at Jayne.

"Got no quarrel wit' you," Bear growled. "That boy, there, had somethin' belongs to us. Need to git it back."

"I gotta quarrel wit' him. Gotta quarrel wit' his name on it," snarled the archer from behind the bruiser.

Simon stood up. "He's still alive, but he'll be dead from blood loss in a few minutes, and if I take out the arrow without a transfusion ready he'll bleed to death right here." He glanced around. "There." He pointed at the coffee table. "Help me lift him onto that; we'll use it as a stretcher."

"No need, doc," drawled Bear. "We'll take him from here."

"Unless you're a licensed physician," Simon argued, sweeping a clutch of empty glasses off the table and onto the chair next to it, "that would be irresponsible of me. I could lose my license."

"Ain't from 'round here, are you?" Bear chuckled. "Ain't no one gonna report you to no licensing board." His expression darkened. "Now, I said git away from him."

"No chance." Mal had his gun in hand. "Jayne, Kaylee, help the doctor out."

Jayne and Simon lifted the coffee table over next to their booth; Kaylee steadied it as they slid Wheatstalk onto it, his legs dangling off the end. The informant twitched slightly, a whistling noise hissing from his chest. Bear made a move towards the stairs and was brought up short as a shot from Mal splintered the dark wood in front of him.

"No, really." Mal's voice was level. "Let the doctor do his work. He does good work." He raised the pistol level with Bear's eyes. "I've seen him."

The bar rustled with the sounds of weapons being drawn. Mostly knives, Zoe figured. She shifted her own aim to cover Jayne and Simon as they lifted the table.

"Get us out of here," Simon murmured, his voice icily calm.

"You heard the man." Mal pointed towards the door, and Jayne headed towards it, Simon following with the other end of the table, Kaylee beside it trying to steady the dying man. Mal and Zoe followed in a slow retreat. They were less than six feet from the door when a third of the crowd surged towards them.

The rest of the crowd surged back. A short, red-faced man with wolf silhouettes on both cheeks came at them with a stiletto and was tripped by a heavyset woman covered in apple blossoms. A kid, couldn't have been more than sixteen, pulled a gun and was dragged back by two slender women in willow leaves. A knot of half a dozen men swirled into a fist-fight behind the pool table.

Mal and Zoe broke for the door and made it out before Bear hit the stairway. Zoe shouted into the radio, "Wash, we're gonna be coming in fast. One wounded, not ours."

"Got it." The sound of _Serenity_'s engines firing up echoed behind the pilot's voice.

Jayne threw the coffee table into the back of the mule. "Saddle up." Simon climbed on beside him as Mal and Zoe flung themselves into the front seats; Kaylee was already perched on the middle rack. Zoe yanked at the stick and peeled out as the wolf-man cleared the pub's door.

"Good thinkin' there, doc," Kaylee beamed at Simon.

"Not fast enough." The doctor ran a hand through his hair; the other pressed a folded bar towel - when had he picked that up? - against the arrow wound. "We won't get back to the ship in time."

"Damn shame," snarled Mal. He looked like he meant it.

\---

"How can they be trailing us this close?" screeched Wash as he dodged between a pair of tumbling asteroids.

"They're following the plasma trail from the leaky vent," Kaylee's voice crackled through the intercom.

Zoe shook her head. "They can probably trace our heat signature without it. The plasma leak just makes it easier."

"Who are these people?" Mal demanded at the comm terminal.

The figure in the holodisplay, a thin, drawn man with a deep tan that hid his ethnicity, shook his head slowly. "Down on Littlefall, they're just called The Racket. To you, they'd be small-time mobsters, but on the 'Fall, they're kind of a big deal." He cleared his throat. "We bought the midigrav from a supplier who wasn't one of theirs. Apparently, they took offense."

A missile went wide as Wash made the ship dance the watusi. A small asteroid shattered off the starboard bow; Wash dodged again to clear the debris field.

"We haven't got any weapons we can shoot at them," Mal growled into the terminal.

"We do, but they're very short-range," the miner said.

"You could throw rocks at them," River's voice commented over the intercom.

"Oh, yeah? How we gonna do that, get out and push 'em?" Jayne demanded from somewhere behind Mal.

Wash's features smoothed. "We don't have to get out to push."

"Huh?" Mal requested clarification.

Wash leaned towards the comm terminal. "Can you give us the command codes for one of the remote tugs? One in our area, or at least on our approach route?"

"Uh, yes." The voice on the comm gave way to the sound of fingers on an old-fashioned keyboard. "I'm sending it encrypted so the Racket can't pick it up."

"Roger." Wash gestured at a control panel to his left; Zoe slid into the seat in front of it. "Receiving transmission . . . got it," she reported.

"Mal, I need you to fly her for a moment," Wash announced, then scrambled out of his chair. The captain leaped to fill it as the pilot began punching the dials on the exterior control panels.

_Serenity_ slid between the gaps in a ring of rocky asteroids, its larger and pricklier pursuer tailing behind it. Another missile left a trail of vapor in the vacuum and missed the smaller ship by feet as it rolled. The other ship tracked; that roll would take the Firefly directly into the center of the firing field for the next missile.

The second ship's nose came up, bearing down on the transport. The Firefly wove slightly, right to left and back, but didn't dodge. The next missile fired -

And the Firefly pulled back sharply and looped. A second vehicle, one of the drone tugs the miners used, veered off in the other direction. The weapons officer's tiger stripes wrinkled as the missile continued straight, and impacted -

A nickel-iron asteroid. Headed straight for them.

Their heat signature flared on Wash's sensor array, then winked out.

"Good call, River," Wash called to the ceiling. No voice replied.

\---

Mal brushed the dirt off his boots. "Can't spring for a new one; the miners weren't that rich. But you can have any used one you want. Go nuts."

Kaylee squealed and bounced through the gate into the junkyard. The big lamps started to come on as the twilight deepened.

Zoe shook her head. "She going to be all right by herself?"

"We'd get in the way, and the manager's more likely to give her a deal than us." The captain shook his head. "The doc's still pouting over losing our contact."

"He'll get over it. He's lost 'em before." The soldier looked upwards. A thin streak of white light shot across the sky.

"Too bad the miners couldn't get there in time to save the rock or salvage the ship." Jayne shifted his jaw in what passed for a thoughtful manner from him. "Seems like a waste."

"It is." A second streak, brighter than the first, followed in the same arc. "Or maybe not." Mal wondered if it was wrong to make a wish on space hardware. Well, one of them was real, at least. The same thing shooting stars had always been. "As long as they don't impact, it'll be fine."

His heart wished for something his brain didn't follow, as a dozen smaller flashes of light followed across the deepening sky.


End file.
